The Ultimate Marketing Automation statistics overview

The Ultimate Marketing Automation statistics overview

The field of Marketing Automation is growing at an astonishing rate. Looking for insight into the current state of Marketing Automation, the market and statistics on adoption and use, I compiled a list of all (useful) available statistics.

Feel free to share some stats, a link back to this article is appreciated.
These numbers will keep on changing, almost every day. So I will update them regularly. I last updated in Jan 2019

Ultimate marketing automation usage statistic:

The ultimate marketing automation usage statistic, this is all you really need:

Ultimate marketing automation usage statistic:
On average 51% of companies are currently using Marketing automation. With more than half of B2B companies (58%) plan to adopt the technology. – Emailmonday “The Ultimate Marketing Automation stats”. (2018) (Tweet this)

1. ADOPTION and MARKETGROWTH of MARKETING AUTOMATION

67% of Marketing Leaders currently use a Marketing Automation Platform. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)

35,2 % of the respondents said they currently utilize marketing automation. 64,8 % answered that marketing automation isn’t being used yet by their company. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)

Nine out of 10 marketers (88 percent) use more than one martech tool on a regular basis—including single-vendor suite users. Only 16 percent of suite users say it’s the only tool they use. – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)

More than half of marketers (56 percent) think the martech industry is evolving faster than their companies’ use of marketing technology. – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)

Over the next two years, an additional 21% of Marketing Leaders plan to use a Marketing Automation Platform. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)

Spending for Marketing Automation tools will grow vigorously over the next few years, reaching $25.1 billion annually by 2023 from $11.4 billion in 2017. – Forrester “Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023 (Global)” (2018)

55% of marketing decision-makers plan to increase their spending on Marketing Technology, with one-fifth of the respondents expecting to increase by 10 percent or more. 38% will spend the same, while only 8% decreases their spend – Forrester “Data Global Business Technographics Marketing Survey” (2018)

Marketing automation technology is expected to grow at a 14% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. The highest growth for “through-channel marketing automation” platforms will reach 25% annually, with “lead-to-revenue automation” platforms at 19.4%. – Forrester “Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023 (Global)” (2018)

Almost 40 % of those not yet using marketing automation are going to invest in it in the next 12 months. Only a tenth of the respondents don’t plan to invest in marketing automation within the next 12 months. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the “Very successful” use their marketing automation systems extensively, while more than a third (37%) achieved best-in-class status with limited use. – Three Deep & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends for Success” (2016)

The majority of users think Marketing Automation is worth the price. 10% finds it inexpensive, 47% fairly priced, 22% pricey but worth it and 11% too expensive. 10% was not sure. – VB Insight “Marketing Automation, how to make the right buying decision” (2015)

61% of respondents are not using marketing automation at all and the remaining responses were split over a large range of 27 different vendors and combinations of solutions. – TFM&A “The 2015 Marketing Technology Report” (2015)

Marketing automation is used by 42% of companies, CRM / sales automation systems by 54%, while Email marketing technology has the highest adoption. It is used by 82% of companies. – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Strategy” (August 2015)

66% of average performing B2B companies indicates that their current technologies are sufficient to scale end-to-end marketing over the next 1-3 years. For 34% they aren’t. ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)

Of the top performers in B2B 69% use Marketing automation for Customer acquisition and 50% for Customer Retention. – ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)

33% have already implemented marketing automation software within their businesses and half of all respondents of (Faststats software users) plan, or aspire, to do so. 11% plan to implement marketing automation immediately and 19% within the next year. Only a few respondents said they weren’t (3%), or were unlikely (5%) to implement marketing automation software. – Source: Apteco Ltd “Trend Report Data driven marketing 2015”

Source: Apteco Ltd “Trend Report Data driven marketing” (2015)

2. Benefits and Goals of Marketing Automation

Almost 70% of the respondents finds improved targeting of messages is the most important benefit of marketing automation. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)

30% of companies find automation of the lead generation process a critical challenge to lead generation success – Ascend2 “Lead Generation to Increase Conversions Survey” (2017)

Nearly two thirds of companies surveyed (63%) expect to realize the benefits of their marketing automation system within six months of implementation. – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).

Only 24% of top marketers included alignment with sales as a priority for marketing automation. This is a potential miss. – Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)

Business Owners, Executives and Marketers asked to identify the biggest benefit of Marketing Automation for them, say it is Saving time (30%) following with Lead Generation (22%) Increase in Revenue (17%) Customer Retention (11%), Tracking and Monitoring of marketing campaigns (8%) and a shortened sales cycle (2%) – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018).

Integrated best-of-breed marketers get the most value from their technology stacks, with 83 percent rating their companies’ ability to leverage the full power of their tools as “excellent” or “good.” – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)

B2B marketers find improved user experience and relevance of communications (59%) to be the biggest advantage of Marketing Automation.

The number of marketers who feel their companies’ current marketing technology helps them better do their jobs increased from 58 percent to 69 percent. – Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)

3. Marketing Automation Results

High Performers are 3.2x more likely that underpreformers to say their technology stack is extremely or very effective at collaboration across marketing functions. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)

High Performers are 2.6x more likely that underpreformers to say their technology stack is extremely or very effective at delivering marketing efficiencies like automation. – Salesforce “State of Marketing” (2017)

Nearly 90% of agencies say their marketing automation strategy is successful, while only 2% count themselves as “worst in class.” – SharpSpring State of Marketing Automation for Agencies” (2017)

Only 8% of companies see increased revenues within 6 months of adopting marketing automation. After one year of MA use 32% claim to see increased revenue. For those to have been using it for more than two years the figure is 40%. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)

33% of company respondents still consider their automated email marketing programmes to be not successful. Only 8% deemed their efforts very successful. – eConsultancy “Email Marketing Industy Census” (2017)

80% of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77% saw the number of conversions increase. – VB Insight “Marketing Automation, how to make the right buying decision” (2015)

Half of the companies reported no increase at all in qualified Leads since implementing Marketing Automation, while only 19% saw a dramatic increase in qualified leads with marketing automation. – LeadMD “The 2016 Marketing Maturity Benchmark Report” (2016)

17% say marketing Automation has been very beneficial for their company, 57% quite beneficial, 26% see limited to no benefit. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)

27% of those new to the technology report “More relevant messages” as a result, but that increases with time to 74% for the veteran Marketing automation users started using MA more than two years ago. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)

Marketers familiar with pipeline marketing are 48% more likely to see ROI greater than 1.5x. Marketers who identify as pipeline marketers are 119% more likely to report sales and marketing alignment. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)

The lack of expertise and know-how (55,6 %), as well as lack of human resources (48,1 %) are most common reasons why companies are not using marketing automation. – Liana “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017)

There’s less internal resistance: A quarter of marketers (25 percent) say they’re facing internal resistance to change at their organizations, down from 33 percent a year ago.

Only 24 percent of marketers currently see implementation or integration as an obstacle, compared to more than a third last year.

The number of marketers who don’t have executive buy-in for martech investment dropped by half, from 22 percent to 12 percent.

Only 10 percent of marketers say they don’t need new martech tools, half the number of a year ago (20 percent).

– Walker Sands State of Marketing Technology 2017 (2017)

The biggest objection (50%)to using marketing automation (software) is cheaper alternatives in the market. – Kinetic Digital Marketing “Marketing Automation 2018 Report: Do You Really Know What It Is?”

25% say they don’t really know what marketing automation is, as their main objection against marketing automation. It seems like this research tapped into a very special and truthful group of participants. With 8% saying they are “against Automation in general” – Kinetic Digital Marketing “Marketing Automation 2018 Report: Do You Really Know What It Is?”

Technology integration complexity is the most challenging obstacle to success, 50% of companies indicate. The result is that only 25% of companies have extensively integrated their disparate marketing technology systems. Nearly as many (22%) have not integrated their marketing technologies at all. – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Strategy” (August 2015)

5. Top Reasons for purchasing Marketing Automation

With 64%, Ease of implementation is the No. 1 criterion for choosing a marketing automation platform, followed by Technical support (42%) and cross-platform integration (41%). – Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)

Only 23% say clients and recommendations factor into the evaluation for choosing a marketing automation platform. – Adestra “State of Marketing Automation Benchmarks for Success” (2017)

In B2B Access to customer data (95%), Marketing alignment with sales (90%), fragmented marketing systems (83%) and limitations with current technologies (80%) are the 4 top challenges for reaching current marketing objectives. ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing “ (2015)

6. Use of Marketing Automation

The top three marketing automation techniques used are Email automation (64%), profiling and targeting (26%), and personalization using dynamic content (23%). – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018)

Lead scoring, Advanced segmentation and AI (artificial intelligence to improve message relevance) were the least often used marketing automation techniques. This could be due to a lack of digital skills in this area. – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018)

Businesses aren’t making the most of marketing automation. Less than 3 in 10 (28%) use many features. – SmartInsights and Getresponse “Email Marketing and Marketing automation Excellence 2018” (2018)

59% of companies do not fully use the technology they have available. Those companies that don’t have all the marketing technology tools they need are much more likely to fully use what they have (33%), than those that do have all the tools they need (9%). – Ascend2 “Marketing Technology Strategy” (August 2015)

Only 14.4% of respondents are currently using predictive analytics, but 34.9% are considering adding it in the near future. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)

A third of agencies don’t pass martech costs back to clients at all. This number rises to 50% amongst small agencies. – Akero “The Agency Marketing Technology Report” (2018)

54% of B2B marketers use marketing automation software to assist them with their content marketing efforts. When asked what benefits technology provides, three out of four (75%) B2B marketers say it provides better insight into how content is performing. Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs – “2019 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, North America”

Marketing Automation is one of the technologies that show the most difference in adoption between most successful (63%) and least successful (39%) marketers. Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs – “2019 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, North America”

65% of marketing executives plan to spend more money on marketing technology in the coming year, including 28% who plan to increase spending by more than 25%. – Conductor 182 Marketing Executives Reveal Their 2015 Success Tactics (2015)

75% of very successful users outsource all or part of their marketing automation strategy planning to benefit from specialized expertise. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)

22% of marketers report that they aren’t confident they can stay up to date with Marketing automation best practices, 79% was confident they could. – B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research “Benchmarking Report Marketing automation” (2015)

67% of respondents report having both marketing automation software and CRM software in their marketing stack. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)

Marketing attribution plays a huge role in measuring marketing performance, particularly to down-funnel metrics such as revenue. 75% of respondents said that they had an attribution model in place, 38.8% of respondents reported using single touch attribution models, while 25.4% are using multi-touch models. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)Only 22.4% of respondents believe that they are using the right attribution model. Despite that, only 30.2% plan to change their attribution model in the near future. – Heinz, Reachforce and research partners “The State of Pipeline Marketing Report” (2016)

B2B top Performers are 20% more likely to currently use Marketing Automation technology than the average performers. – ACT-ON and Gleanster Research “Rethinking the Role of Marketing” (2015)

Historical Marketing Automation Statistics

Below is an overview of the marketing automation stats from gone years, either from before 2015 or already replaced by newer versions of the same research.
Most aren’t valid anymore. Automation and MarTech have developed so fast, but they do give a unique perspective on how things used to be. Have fun looking into the history and evolution of Marketing Automation:

Best-in-Class companies are 67% more likely to use a marketing automation platform. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

Only 22% of mid-sized companies use analytics to manage their marketing campaigns. – Beagle Research Group “2013 Marketing Automation Study: Data and Analytics: Marketing’s Next Frontier” (June 2013)

85% of B2B marketers using marketing automation platforms feel that they’re not using them to their full potential.SiriusDecisions “Increasing Adoption of Marketing Automation Platforms” (2014)

The adoption of marketing automation coupled with CRM integration has grown remarkably 5 years ago 7.9% of respondents had an integrated CRM and demand generation solution and only 1 in 4 (27%) had some level of integration. – ResearchCorp “Demand Generation Adoption Survey” (2014)

The best performing capabilities are CRM Integration, Outbound marketing campaign integration and Extending length of customer lifecycle for companies using MA more than 2 years. – HeinzMarketing and Ontarget “Marketing Automation Effectiveness and Performance Survey” (2014)

The best performing capabilities for MA over 2 years in relation to importance are Lead Segmentation, Lead Nurturing Campaigns and Generating New Prospects. – HeinzMarketing and Ontarget “Marketing Automation Effectiveness and Performance Survey” (2014)

45% of companies are taking advantage of lead nurturing capabilities in their Marketing Automation Platform, including just 68% of Best-in-Class companies. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than 2 years. – Gleanster “Q3 2013 Marketing Automation Benchmark” (2013)

The most important criteria for a marketing automation system for CMOs are ease-of-use (92%) and the ability to tie marketing performance to sales (72%). – Gleanster “Q3 2013 Gleanster Marketing Automation Benchmark” (2013)

Of US businesses with 20 or more employees only about 4% are users of marketing automation software. – VentureBeat “Buyers and Users Marketing Automation Survey: Results, Analysis and Key Findings” (2014)

89% of respondents who have deployed marketing automation have integrated it with a CRM system. – ResearchCorp “Demand Generation Adoption Survey” (2014)

51% of marketing execs say their marketing technologies and data are only loosely integrated or not at all. – Signal “Cross-Channel Marketing and Technology Survey. Overcoming Barriers to Cross-Channel Success: Optimizing the Marketing Technology Stack” (2014)

24% of companies has managed to integrate their core tools to the point it satisfies the majority of their integration needs. – Signal “Cross-Channel Marketing and Technology Survey. Overcoming Barriers to Cross-Channel Success: Optimizing the Marketing Technology Stack” (2014)

91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)

The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase to 50% by 2015. – Serious descisions “How Marketing Automation Has Evolved” (2012)

The most mature users of marketing automation achieve 32% greater revenue versus their plan than average companies – and a whopping 79% more than the least mature companies. – Marketo “Benchmark on Revenue Performance” (Sept 2012)

The most significant barriers to marketing automation success are

Lack of an effective strategy (52%)

Complexity of the system (42%)

Inadequate contact data quality (38%)

Lack of employee skills (32%)

Lack of relevant content (31%)

Marketing and sales alignment (30%)

Budget constraints (27%)

– Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).

Marketing automation adoption is higher in companies with more employees. Adoption is 76% of companies with >100 employees, 26% in mid-sized companies of 10-100 employees and 18% amongst companies with Buyer Zone “The State of B2B Lead Generation 2013 Report” (2013)

A lack of mature marketing practices / processes is the #1 reason for not implementing a marketing automation platform. Indicated by 45% not currently using a MAP. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

54% of marketers that hadn’t implement Marketing Automation, said it was part of their plan, but they have other elements in need of more immediate attention. 21% said that the cost structures where Prohibitive. – Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)

13% of the marketers said a Lack of technical proficiency in their team was stopping them from adopting Marketing Automation. A lack of understanding of benefits is holding back 12% – Redeye and TFM&A Insights “The Marketing Automation Report 2014” (2014)

53% of all respondents are currently using or applying marketing automation. Another 17% are currently evaluating or considering marketing automation. Pepper Global “B2B Marketing Automation Report 2014”

In the America’s there are significantly higher adoption with 69% of respondents using or applying marketing automation. In EMEA this is 39% and in APAC only 36%. – Pepper Global “B2B Marketing Automation Report 2014”

97% of B2B respondents used email marketing software. Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation suites were the next most commonly used technologies, at 97 and 96 percent.B2B – Software Advice and Research Now “Demand Generation Benchmark” (2014)

Only 14% have standardized, fully integrated cross-channel marketing automation platforms, with 42% of retailers standing out as more advanced than other verticals using this type of solution. – Forrester Research & Oracle “Why You Need To Be A Modern Marketer” (2014)

66% marketers reported allocating less than 10% of their budget to Marketing Automation. – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)

54% marketers who have not yet implemented Marketing Automation cite lack of budgets as a major obstacle preventing implementation. – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)

Companies that have adopted marketing automation perform well compared to companies that haven’t:

B2B marketers see an average 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured leads versus non-nurtured leads after successfully deploying a lead nurturing program – DemandGen “Calculating the Real ROI from Lead Nurturing” (Aug 2013)

Companies using marketing automation see 53% higher conversion rates from initial response-to-MQL and a revenue growth rate that is 3.1% higher than non-users. – Aberdeen Group “Marketing Lead Management Report” (2012)

63% of companies that are outgrowing their competitors use marketing automation. – The Lenskold Group “2013 Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study” (2013)

68% of Best-in-Class companies are using lead scoring, compared to just 28% of Laggard firms. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

Only 3% of 186,500 businesses surveyed used one of the four most common marketing automation systems- Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot or Pardot. – Mintigo “State of the Marketing Technology Industry” (2014)

Best-in-Class firms are more than 2X more likely to use lead nurturing with a MAP than Laggard firms (68% vs. 27%). – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

Best-in-Class firms are more than 4X more likely to use database segmentation and targeting with a Marketing Automation Provider than Laggard firms. A difference of 78% vs. 23%. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

Best-in-Class companies reduced close cycle time by an average of 49%, compared with a 30% improvement by all other companies. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

88% of top-performing companies are effective in routing “hot” leads to Sales vs. 57% of All Others. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation 2014: Processes that Produce” (2014)

58% of top-performing companies; where marketing contributes more than half of the sales pipeline, have adopted marketing automation. – Forrester Research “Gauging Your Progress and Success” (2013)

B2C marketers who are using automation- including everything from birthday emails to cart abandonment programs – have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. – eMarketer “Email Marketing Benchmarks” (2013)

Companies that use marketing automation are 3 times more likely to track and attribute their content-marketing efforts to multiple touchpoints than companies without automation (36% vs 11%). – The Lenskold Group “2013 Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study” (2013)

The top four features of a Marketing Automation used are email marketing (89%), lead nurturing (84%), integrations such as CRM, mobile, social etc for accumulating customer intelligence across channels (80%), and cross-channel campaign management (82%). – Regalix “The State of Marketing Automation” (2014)

The combination of process with marketing automation yields a 417% increase in revenue from those surveyed. – Focus.com “Marketing Automation By the Numbers” (2012)

Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. – Focus.com “Marketing Automation By the Numbers” (2012)

Jordie van Rijn is an independent email marketing consultant. Next to helping companies improve their email marketing results he gives email marketing training and is a writer and speaker in the field of online marketing.